Good morning, everyone, and welcome back to the messy masterpiece podcast, which had

an Tory happy Sunday. Happy Sunday. Happy Sunday, fam. We hope that your

weekend is going great. And we also hope that you're getting ready to plan out your week.

If you don't know what we're talking about, go listen to that previous long form episode

called taking control of your life. Yes. We are rounding out day four of our finding

freedom from stress, devotion of the Bible. There's a link to that in the description

of this podcast. As always, I'm going to read the scripture and then Tory is going to read

the Divo. Let's do it. The scripture is John 10 verse 10. And it says, the thief comes

only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come that they may have life and have life

to the full. The devotional says, stop giving stress power. I'm

stressed seems to be a pretty standard greeting these days, much like I'm busy. And

if we're honest, we can often use our stress as a source of pride. Saying or stressed

can make us feel important because even though we may not like the feeling stress gives

us, we like the status boost it brings. And our fast paced culture stresses seen as the

norm. It's losing its negative connotations and is instead become associated with hard

work, ambition and success on film awfully convicted right now, right? We assume successful

people are stressed people. So we strive harder and a lack of stress can make us feel lazy

or unmotivated. The result we're constantly trying to do more and be more, which brings

you guessed it, more stress. We're over committed because we can't say no. We're settling

for superficial connections online instead of carving time for meaningful conversation. And

we're building stress into our identities. But stressed out, maxed out lives are not

what God had in mind for us. Jesus said that our enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy.

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